REPAINTING A VINYL BANNER WITH FLEETWOOD CRESTS

The challenge is to repaint this 12 foot banner for the Fleetwood Civic Society.  

The design I want to do is something like this.

The Fleetwood crest is a very simple one compared to some others.  The definition of the crest symbols are that the rose represents the red rose of Lancashire.  The ship represents the port of Fleetwood.   The birds are known as martlets or swallows, they depict a bird that spends almost all its life on the wing and so very hard working.  The blue wavy pattern represents the sea, the gold wavy part is the sandy shore and the motto is self explanatory.  The main colours of gold and blue, the dividing lines and the martlets are from the arms of Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood's family who laid the town and gave it his name.  The following is the official description.  

ARMS: Per saltire nebuly Or and Azure in chief a Rose Gules barbed and seeded proper in base an Ancient Galley of the third and in fesse two Martlets of the first.

Motto 'ONWARD'.
Granted 25th August 1933.

 I always think of it as resembling a woman's face with the birds being the eyes and the ship her mouth.  She has a rose in her hair and the motto Onward is her necklace.  

This old shield will help me with the design.

I couldn't print a three foot pattern in one go of course.  So I opened my desk top publisher as an A4 page and imported the picture.  Then I sized the picture to three feet and just placed each section on the page and printed.  I ended up with 16 sections that I just sellotaped together.  Cut each section out and drew round it with pencil.  I now know that I could have uploaded my picture to www.blockposters.com and printed it at the correct size!  Well you learn something every day!

Acrylic paints are ideal for this project but I see I will need more than one coat.

Well so far so good.  Ready for the the next stage.

Crest number one finished.  I outlined the design with a black permanent marker instead of paint. It was far more accurate than using a brush.  Finally I used acrylic varnish to seal it.  The varnish was too thick so I watered it right down one part varnish to two parts water.  Just one coat for now, I'll do a final coat later on.

 I use Eco-Friendly acrylic paint which has a pretty good coverage. 

 6 inch tall letters printed and cut out as per my pattern.

 Letters taped down in their positions and pencilled around.  House is upside down whilst I do this project.  I'll be glad when my craft room is ready.

 First coat of acrylic paint has gone on pretty well.  

I varnished all the letters and the crests.  Notice the space underneath the title.  This is a space to advertise all the different events we will hold.

This will be the first event we will use the banner for.  I can't wait to see it on the balcony of the Mount Pavilion.  It's been well worth the effort.